The Palm Reader's Wisdom
by riskmykiss
Summary: This is just a one-shot featuring Rogue, Remy and Mystique. It's a twist to the X-men world I've been tinkering with, just a possibility really.  I may continue, I may not ;


"_If you look long into the abyss, the abyss looks long into you," _

_Nietchze _

Rogue nudged the Body with the toe of her boot and stared sightlessly into its eyes. Hours crept by like shadows, maddeningly silent, their accusations oddly consoling. They could bring her no guilt. All of her short life had been crawling toward this moment, now the world had stopped turning. The glaring sun could not revive her, could not warm her skin.

The bitter iron of blood filled her mouth and she bit down to keep it from flowing across her lips. The rocky overhand they had fled too was still damp and cool, the last remnants of moisture creeping along the Body like morning dew. Wordlessly, she stripped off her gloves and laid them meticulously across a nearby rock. She studied her hands. Lines in her palms snaked mercilessly across them. They say the story of a life could be contained in the palms. But what of the story of a moment, an hour? All of her life had been crawling towards this end.

The end that would mark her forever. What drove a woman to madness? Was it the agony of loving someone you could never touch? Was it the cage of the mortal body? This cursed body was hers but it was not her. It was called by her name but it could not keep hold of her essence. Remy had known that.

Had it only been hours ago? She used the tip of her finger to trace a line. They called this the life line. She traced it all the way to the end.

She heard Remy's voice softened by passion, the restraint of it, as if everything he felt was tangled in that desperate painful word.

"Marie, Marie," he'd cried out.

It was only by accident she'd discovered the betrayal. And bless him, despite his handsome face, despite the playful flirtatious nature, he'd loved only her until the very end. What irony that the man who loved all women would be ensnared by the rapture of a woman he could never touch?

Raven had assessed this dilemma clinically, with a detached bored interest. And she had recognized it for what it was…a weakness. She had come to him in the night, heavy-lidded eyes weighted with the promise of desire. Woken him gently wrapped in Rogue's form and he had sleepily dreamed an hour of love with her, crying gently, "Marie, Marie" as she slid unlined palms along his chest.

All the while, Rogue patiently watched, confused, rage pounding like retreating footsteps in her battered brain.

"It wasn't my essence, Remy," she said softly to herself in the still morning, her words raining down on the Body, mimicking the tears her heart was too cold to shed.

Remy would have given her anything. He memories, the fractured broken pieces of his life in exchange for a single, forbidden kiss-his pride, all the goodness left in his soul in exchange for a lifetime with a woman he couldn't kiss goodnight.

And that was his downfall. He trusted her shape, the hands he'd come to love, even as her body had come to him in the night, trusted her even as that body had taken a knife and plunged it into his chest. He'd let himself become a body broken with love for her.

Rogue could not move fast enough, and maybe that was ultimately why she had killed her without remorse. Not because she had stolen a touch from Remy but because while Rogue had stood there burning alive with jealousy, she had let Mystique slip a knife between his ribs, too late, too late entirely for her to save him.

But now it was done. The Body lay in the open growing colder despite the sun. Rogue stood for a few moments longer, unable to speak through the hatred that rose in her throat. So she studied her palms. Watched with a dispassionate, clinical interest as she used Mystique's gift to transform into her body. Watched, as a scientist studies a cell, as her life line faded to the deep indigo skin of her once beloved mother.

Rogue left her there on the overhang, exposed to the unforgiving gaze of the sun. Was it Raven Darkholme's body or Marie's? Who could say? But one thing was for certain; love lines intersected life lines, nothing dissolves without consequences, and a new era of mutant power was about to begin. Beginnings after all, very often emerge from the tragic_, _the cruel, the maddening human end.

_**A/N: This is just a little X-men one shot I dreamed up, as a means of getting out some sadness I'd been holding on too. YES. I know I killed Remy : ( I haven't decided if I'd like to continue on with this story or leave it as just a little vignette. **_

_**Please, Please, Please if you're interested in seeing where this goes, shoot me a review. I eat them up like candy. (And I'll return the favor ~_^) **_


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